"Army Ants"

'Orphans: Bastards', 2006

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For years, Tom Waits has used obscure insect facts as a tool of self-presentation…and self-defense. In interview after interview, he has avoided answering questions about himself or his process by busting out a bunch of random bug trivia. Ever wily, Tom knows this gives his profiler a perfect character - kooky, weird, eccentric - without requiring him to really reveal itself. 

For instance, a Rolling Stone interview in 1999 opens this way: 

"You know what I'm big on? Strange and unusual facts,” Tom Waits says, flipping through the pages of a crumpled notebook filled with bursts of serpentine scrawl that he has pulled from his back pocket. Waits should be gabbing about Mule Variations, his first album of new songs since 1993 and his debut, after long spells with Elektra and Island Records, on the independent Epitaph label. Instead, the forty-nine-year-old singer and composer – dressed in ranch-hand denim, with brown dirt encrusted on the left shoulder of his jacket – takes a moment to decode his handwriting, then looks up with a lopsided grin.

“Did you know there are more insects in one square mile of rural earth than there are human beings on the whole planet?” Waits asks in the warm, lumpy growl that, with a few extra notes, doubles as his singing voice. 

Here's a strange and unfortunate fact: The interview ran in the issue with this bug on the cover:

Read enough Tom Waits interviews and you'll learn where you can buy elephant beetles the size of a child's shoe, why a synthesizer is like an ant farm, and what happens if you decapitate a cockroach. So it’s no surprise that in 2006 Tom decided to just go ahead and turn his little insect-facts notebook into a whole song. 

"Song" is maybe a generous term here. "Army Ants" is more of a poem, or even just a recitation of macabre bug info over a briskly walking bass line. "The Arachnid Moths lay their eggs inside other insects along the borders of fields or roads in clusters of white cocoons." "The female Praying Mantis devours the male while they are mating." "If one places a minute amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death." Those sorts of things.

The Orphans liner notes say, “Insect facts gathered from The World Book Encyclopedia, Audubon Field Guide, reliable sources and the naked eye.” But, if you've read any interviews with Tom, you realize he probably knew most of these already. Calling them "facts" is perhaps as generous as calling this a “song”; some are closer to myths or old wives' tales.

If you haven't heard the track, or haven't heard it in a while, I don't want to spoil the ending, but the last verse adds a couple twists that pivot out from obscure insect trivia. But, really, reciting obscure insect trivia is the main point, and you can hear in his delivery how much Tom relishes doing it. 

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Ranking "A" Songs

Bonus! When I finish with a letter, I’m going to rank all the songs that began with it. And we’ve officially hit every song that begins with A. So here’s my ranking, from best to worst-but-still-pretty good:

1. "All the World Is Green"

2. "Anywhere I Lay My Head"

3. "Adios Lounge"

4. "Alice"

5. "Annie's Back in Town"

6. "After You Die"

7. "Ain't Goin' Down to the Well"

8. "All Stripped Down"

9. "Army Ants"

10. "Altar Boy"

11. "All the Time"

12. "Another Man's Vine"

13. "Apartment for Rent"

If you missed any of those writeups, the archive is here. See you in the B section next week.

Coming up next: Tom records a tire machine